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April 08, 2017

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Syrian refugees in the US commend Trump for his missile strike against Syria

Syrian refugee, Rashid Mahmoud, who arrived the United States less than 2
years ago rejoiced at the news of American missiles pummeling a Syrian
air base Thursday night, and struggled with praise for President Donald
J. Trump, who has more often seemed like an antagonist than an ally.

Mr. Mahmoud, said in an interview on Friday at his new home in Lowell, Mass said:

“It was good to protect people, and I think it’s human — it’s required
by humanity” .As for the president, he said, “I’m just supportive for
yesterday, not all the time.”

Syrian refugees mostly welcomed an attack on the violent and oppressive
Assad government they fled, even if they thought it was too little or
too late. But they are unaccustomed to seeing Mr. Trump as any sort of
advocate, and their praise for him seemed tentative.

Mr. Mahmoud and his family left their hometown, Afrin, northwest of
Aleppo, and lived for years in Turkey, before getting permission to go
to the United States. Just as they were about to leave, in late January,
Mr. Trump’s first pass at an immigration order put their plans on hold;
when courts struck down the order, they were finally able to enter the
country, on Feb. 9.

So jubilation about an action by the president was “a new emotion,” he
said, taking a break from a work sheet on English verb tenses.
Mohamad Chaghlil, 35, a woodworker from Damascus, said he hoped the
missile attack — far too limited in his view to change the course of the
war — would be the start of a major course correction by Mr. Trump. But
he said he doubted it. And like some other refugees, he questioned why a
poison gas attack that was blamed on the government prompted the
American strike now, when earlier atrocities did not.

“I don’t have full idea why he did that now,” he said. “We lose hundreds
of Syrian people every day, we lost more than half a million people in
Syria. So why chemical attack is worse? Dead is dead. I can’t
understand, and the Syrians can’t understand.”

Mr. Chaghlil and his parents left Syria for Jordan four years ago, then
began the laborious process of gaining refugee status. After his father
died last July, his mother had to revise her paperwork, he said,
delaying her case, so while Mr. Chaghlil came to the United States in
December, she remains in Jordan.

“I talk with her every morning,” he said. “She is old. She needs me, and I need her. I’m alone here and she is alone there.”

He said he worries about where American immigration policy will leave her, and still sees the president as anti-Muslim.

“I think he doesn’t care about who needs the support, and who is the
murderer and who is the good person,” said Mr. Chaghlil, who was
admitted to the country in December and lives in New Haven. “Maybe he
felt he has to do something for politics.”

Ayham al-Asmi , who had been upset by Mr. Trump’s attempts to bar
refugees, was so enthusiastic in his support for the airstrikes that he
said he would vote for Mr. Trump if he could. He said more than 150
members of his extended family have died in the violence in Syria.

“He’s a national hero now,” he said of the president. “100 percent.”

Mr. Asmi, 34, who arrived in Worcester, Mass., about 18 months ago, said
he had stayed up all night after seeing news of the raid on Facebook,
contacting elated friends and family around the world.

“The Syrian people just gave up on anyone coming to their rescue,” he
said through an interpreter, Amjad Bahnassi, who is a leader in his
mosque. The attack, Mr. Asmi said, was “light at the end of the tunnel.”

Zelekha Mahmoud, 31, said the news of the American missile attack
allowed her to hope that the war could come to an end, and that she, her
husband, and their four small children, could return home. They settled
in October in Chicago, and are adjusting to their new life. They pray
and socialize at an Islamic center, the children go to school, and her
husband has found work at a food packaging company. But she longs for
Syria.
She says she is grateful that the United States has sheltered her and
her family, but she remains wary of the welcome here; Mr. Trump’s travel
orders at first made her fear they would be expelled.
When her husband joyfully told her of the strike:

“I was so happy,” she said, sitting in their apartment on Chicago’s
North Side. “I feel that maybe now they will get rid of Assad so that
Syria will be secure again, so we can return.”

Anwar Jebran, 28, who has lived in Chicago since 2013, said he and his family, had mixed feelings about the strike.

Mohamad Haidar, 47, who settled with his family in San Diego a year ago,
said he feared that limited American strikes might escalate the war
rather than tamp it down.

“If the U.S. wanted to interfere with military action it would be more
beneficial to strike the presidential palace in Damascus,” said Mr.
Haidar, who, with his wife and three children, fled their town southwest
of Aleppo in 2012, moving at first to Indonesia. “The United States is
capable of stopping the conflict in one month if they are taking it
seriously.”

Unlike some others, he said he was not angered by Mr. Trump’s travel orders.

“I thought as the president, it is up to him to decide to decide what is
beneficial to his own country,” he said. “But I wish they took into
consideration in the decision how many innocent people are suffering and
hurting in Syria.”

Source: NY Times

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